Mixed Signals Over Fate of Gifted-and-Talented Programs

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

Published: December 10, 2003

Depending on who is asked, the city's Department of Education may or may not be planning big changes for gifted-and-talented programs in schools citywide.

Last week, the school system's top instructional official, Deputy Chancellor Diana Lam, said that efforts were under way to change admission requirements so that more minority students could get into the programs.

But her boss, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, took a different view yesterday. Asked whether the standards would be lowered, the chancellor said: ''I don't think so. We have a strong commitment to the gifted-and-talented programs.''

Mr. Klein was asked about the issue yesterday at Public School 28, on 155th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan. There, he and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced plans to speed up a half-dozen school construction projects.

But when Mr. Bloomberg opened the floor to questions on other subjects, the topic turned to the gifted-and-talented programs, which supporters say play a crucial role in keeping middle-class families from abandoning the system.

For several weeks, officials in school districts across the city had said they were uncertain whether the programs would exist next year.

Fears among some parents about the demise of the programs seemed to be confirmed on Friday by Ms. Lam's response to a question at a forum at the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University.

According to city education officials, Ms. Lam declined to give specifics about the city's plans but said they would ''expand the definition of what it means to be gifted and talented.'' That quotation, which appeared in a Daily News report about the forum, set off a firestorm.

Gifted programs have long been a source of controversy. Critics say the programs discriminate against black and Hispanic children.

Surveys conducted between 1996 and 1998 found that white students occupied a majority of the more than 30,000 seats in gifted programs at elementary and middle schools citywide, though whites accounted for less than 30 percent of all students.

New York City's gifted programs have been under investigation by the federal Department of Education's civil rights office since the mid-1990's, after complaints were filed by community groups like Acorn and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.

In responding to questions about Ms. Lam's remarks yesterday, Chancellor Klein referred to the federal investigation, suggesting that the programs were being carefully reviewed.

''In terms of the issues on gifted and talented that the deputy superintendent was referring to,'' he said, ''there has been an investigation in the Office of Civil Rights that you and others are aware about. We want to make sure our criteria are rigorous, are fair, are nondiscriminatory, and we'll stand by those criteria.''

Since the summer, rumors of planned changes to the city's gifted programs have circulated among parents.

State Senator Carl Kruger, a Democrat from Brooklyn, said he had heard so many complaints from ''hysterical'' parents that in October he held a meeting on the future of gifted-and-talented education. About 800 parents showed up, he said. Some of the parents, he said, had been told by officials at their children's schools that gifted testing would not take place this year and that the programs were in jeopardy.

''They were told, and I don't know who told them, that there were no gifted programs on the horizon,'' Mr. Kruger said.

At the meeting, he said, a schools official announced that the programs would remain in place -- at least through next year.

Jerry Russo, Mr. Klein's press secretary, said officials had made no changes as of yet to the gifted programs. ''There is currently a review under way,'' he said. Mr. Russo said that the programs in the past were run by the individual districts, but that the current review was taking a citywide perspective.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the teachers' union, called reporters yesterday to weigh in on the issue of gifted programs. She said the administration would likely have eliminated the programs had Ms. Lam's remarks not been made public.

''Thankfully, Diana Lam made a speech and made her intentions clear,'' Ms. Weingarten said. ''The gifted-and-talented programs have been a glue that have cemented a lot of the good parts of the school system together. There are also magnets that have maintained the middle class in schools, whether that is a Hispanic middle class, black middle class or a white middle class.''

But the mayor's primary purpose at the news conference yesterday was to detail school construction plans. He said the city would expedite projects including the renovation of a vacant building a few blocks from P.S. 28 that had previously housed a Catholic high school. The expedited projects are part of a $13.1 billion education capital plan that the mayor and chancellor announced last month.

The city's plan calls for the state to provide half of the money for school construction. But Mr. Klein conceded yesterday that the city has yet to get any sign from Gov. George E. Pataki as to how much money he is willing to provide.

In a separate development, the state's Public Employment Relations Board yesterday rejected on technical grounds a complaint filed by Ms. Weingarten's union, the United Federation of Teachers, which had accused the city of violating state labor laws.

The union quickly resubmitted the complaint, but not before the city issued a statement expressing delight at the rejection.

Photo: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg greeted students at Public School 28 yesterday after a news conference that touched on construction projects and on the future of the school system's gifted-and-talented programs. (Photo by John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times) Chart: ''Foreign Languages on Campus'' Enrollment in college foreign language classes has grown since 1980, but it is still about half of what it was in 1960. The popularity of languages has also shifted, with increases in Spanish, Italian and Japanese but decreases in French and German. Graph tracks Modern foreign language students, per 100 students since 1960. Graph tracks Enrollments in the leading modern foreign languages. (Source by Modern Language Association)